The Pennsylvania State Game Lands (SGL) are lands managed by the

Pennsylvania Game Commission The Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) is the state agency responsible for wildlife conservation and management in Pennsylvania in the United States. It was originally founded years ago and currently utilizes more than 700 full-time employees and ...

(PGC) for

hunting Hunting is the human activity, human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, or killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to harvest food (i.e. meat) and useful animal products (fur/hide (skin), hide, ...

trapping Animal trapping, or simply trapping or gin, is the use of a device to remotely catch an animal. Animals may be trapped for a variety of purposes, including food, the fur trade, hunting, pest control, and wildlife management. History Neolithic ...

, and

fishing Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment, but may also be caught from stocked bodies of water such as ponds, canals, park wetlands and reservoirs. Fishing techniques inclu ...

. These lands, often not usable for farming or development, are donated to the PGC or purchased by the PGC with hunting license monies. The Pennsylvania Game Commission runs a monthly publication called the ''Pennsylvania Game News''. This publication features financial and legislative updates from the PGC, stories, and monthly Field Notes submitted by the Wildlife Conservation Officers of the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

History

Wild game animals have been hunted for thousands of years in what is now

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, first by the

Indigenous peoples of the Americas The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples. Many Indigenous peoples of the A ...

, later by Europeans. By 1890 game had practically disappeared from Pennsylvania. That year, John M. Phillips and other sportsmen, recognizing the scarcity of game, formed the Pennsylvania Sportsmen's Association so that they could press the state government for protection of wildlife. This resulted in the formation of the

. New game laws were enacted by the

General Assembly A general assembly or general meeting is a meeting of all the members of an organization or shareholders of a company. Specific examples of general assembly include: Churches * General Assembly (presbyterian church), the highest court of presby ...

in 1897 to protect populations of

deer Deer or true deer are hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the red deer, and the fallow deer; and the Capreolinae, including the reindeer ...

elk The elk (''Cervus canadensis''), also known as the wapiti, is one of the largest species within the deer family, Cervidae, and one of the largest terrestrial mammals in its native range of North America and Central and East Asia. The common ...

waterfowl Anseriformes is an order of birds also known as waterfowl that comprises about 180 living species of birds in three families: Anhimidae (three species of screamers), Anseranatidae (the magpie goose), and Anatidae, the largest family, which in ...

and

game birds Galliformes is an order of heavy-bodied ground-feeding birds that includes turkeys, chickens, quail, and other landfowl. Gallinaceous birds, as they are called, are important in their ecosystems as seed dispersers and predators, and are often ...

. The Commission appointed the first game protectors and empowered constables to enforce the new laws. Game Commissioner Joseph Kalbus remarked that Pennsylvania hunters, "appeared to think they had...an inherent right to destroy game and birds at pleasure." Pennsylvanians, like other Americans resisted efforts to limit hunting to protect the game. In 1906 alone, fourteen protectors were shot at and three were killed. In 1905 Governor Samuel Pennypacker authorized the Commission to establish 'game preserves' in state forests to protect deer,

Wild turkey The wild turkey (''Meleagris gallopavo'') is an Upland game bird, upland ground bird native to North America, one of two extant species of Turkey (bird), turkey and the heaviest member of the order Galliformes. It is the ancestor to the domestic ...

Grouse Grouse are a group of birds from the order Galliformes, in the family Phasianidae. Grouse are presently assigned to the tribe Tetraonini (formerly the subfamily Tetraoninae and the family Tetraonidae), a classification supported by mitochondr ...

Woodcock The woodcocks are a group of seven or eight very similar living species of wading birds in the genus ''Scolopax''. The genus name is Latin for a snipe or woodcock, and until around 1800 was used to refer to a variety of waders. The English name ...

, and other animals. The first was on in

Clinton County Clinton County may refer to: *Counties named for George Clinton, first and third Governor of New York, and later the fourth Vice President of the United States: **Clinton County, New York ** Clinton County, Ohio *Counties named for DeWitt Clinton, ...

. In 1913, by act of the General Assembly, passing the Resident Hunter's License Law, the Commission began to charge one dollar for each hunting license, which provided funding to purchase additional lands for hunting. The Commonwealth had twenty game preserves but the game population was still extremely low, so Pennsylvania restocked the Game Lands with game from other states and Canada. Today, the Commission has set aside almost 1.5 million acres (610 thousand hectares) as State Game Lands.

List of State Game Lands

https://www.pgc.pa.gov/HuntTrap/StateGameLands/Pages/State-Game-Lands-Maps.aspx State Game Lands Maps, retrieved August, 2018 For Game Lands containing more than one parcel, coordinate given is for a point central to the array of parcels. * Some quantities shown are deeded acreage, some are calculated acreage.

References

External links

Official Pennsylvania State Game Lands website

Pennsylvania Game Commission website

{{Protected Areas of Pennsylvania

History

List of State Game Lands

See also

References

External links